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The Quest for Duilintinn
THIS PAGE IS STILL VERY MESSY AND I'M SORRY The Buildup September 15 1547: Henrik Born February 7 1550: Sean Born July 10 1550: Jackie Born August 11 1552: Marvin Born November 1556: Jackie orphaned, gets taken by the Guard Coalition to the Whetstone to be a squire April 11 1559: Chase Born July 1563: Jackie decides he doesn’t want to be a knight after all, quits and starts vigilante stuff May 1564: Henrik arrives in Duilintinn for the first time The Beginning Feb 1565-May 1565: The Quest Begins. There’s some prophecy saying that there’s a King’s Eye that will bond with Sean when the boy is 15, so Sean goes on his own to look for the King’s Eye rumored to be in the forested mountains northwest of his home soon after his birthday. Has various mini-adventures along the way, starts out by visiting small villages and towns along the road for rumors, goes chasing after some dead ends and wild goose chases, feels stupid a lot, learns a lot about the forest, gets attacked by brigands from time to time, bumps into a few fae folk, and eventually FINALLY after THREE WHOLE MONTHS OF LOOKING he finally stumbles upon the King's Eye. And the King's Eye likes him. Yay! Sean calls him Samwise. This period of questing really shows Sean how chaotic and messed up the land kinda is atm, and bonding with the King's Eye really showed him that this destiny was more than just a “cool you got a pet” but a stepping stone to a much higher calling. June 1565-October 1565: Five months of aimless “I WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE BUT HOWWWWWWW” stress. He does some good deeds, solves some minor problems in the towns he was in before, but doesn’t feel like he’s actually making a big enough difference. People really respect him because of the King’s Eye, but no one is really latching onto the ideas of this kid who wants to make the world better. Frankly, the kid doesn’t even know what ideas he has. The concept of founding a kingdom has yet to enter his mind. Anti Recruited October 10 1565-March 1566: Enter Anti. Sean bumps into him in a pub one day during this aimless questing. Anti sees an opportunity when it bites him in the rear and gets buddy with Sean. Sam is very uncertain about Anti but Sam is also a little baby King's Eye and thus doesn’t have his character-reading instincts fully developed yet so he tolerates him because Sean seems to think Anti is cool. Anti is the ambitious, knows what he wants, charismatic person that took Sean’s aimless “idk i just want to be there for ppl and do something” and started pointing it in a specific direction. It starts out with Anti using his charisma to get Sean audiences with local government and really getting people interested in him, and eventually starts giving him the idea of going out beyond the small area in the northern rim of the Draoidh Valley. Takes Sean west over the Agrona Bridge to show him that there’s a big huge world out there beyond the valley waiting for him. Around this point, they hear the rumor of a vigilante in the south and start heading in that direction. October 31 1565: Jameson found in the woods appearing to be age 5. Jackie Recruited April 1566-June 1566: Sean and Antonius run around the Monaidh Plains for a while trying to track down this vigilante dude and eventually find him. His name is Jackie. Have to do a bit of convincing but the king's eye really wins Jackie over quick because those things are big legend big big. Jackie then says that he heard rumors of a powerful mage in Monacoil and they head that way. Marvin Recruited June 1566-August 1566: Cross Loch Glas but get lost in the fog on land and it’s big scary. Anti has got some magic to light the way and Sean is sorta used to it but not really. They manage to get found by Marvin, who is good at navigating the fog and heard from his grandma that there were visitors coming because she just knows (™) apparently. Grandma is actually the mage of rumor but she is old and not really up for adventuring and says that they should take Marvin instead. Marvin is like WTF no i’m staying with you and she’s like “look i’m fine we’ve got a growing group of mages here now that also think i’m pretty neat, i’ll be taken care of while you’re doing cool destiny stuff.” after all she knew that Marvin was big mad at all the bad things that happened and was always full of teenaged angst and rage because he didn’t have an outlet to fix it and now here is an opportunity to have an outlet so TAKE THE OUTLET MARVIN. So he does. Near Disaster at Cordoire September 1566-February 1567: The group, now full of fighty beans who tend to address problems head on (except Anti but he’s overruled) goes and does that. They bounce around the Monaidh Plains taking out bandit camps and brigands and saving towns and stuff. Lots of bonding time between Marvin and Jackie. Meanwhile, Anti is still like “WE NEED TO THINK BIGGER” and insists that they need to address the root of the problem (aka lack of government or system or anything) and finally nudges the group in the direction of Cordoire, aka the biggest and most influential city in the land that is the seat of what most vaguely looks like a government but is actually just a chaotic mess of warring groups who want power and keep deposing each other and don’t ever have time to do any actual governing. However, when they get there, they end up getting in a bad fight and Jackie gets hurt reallllyyyyyy bad. Poison. No one in Cordoire is able to help but one nice local fellow tells the group that there is a doctor in Fionport who might be able to help. Anti wants to stay in Cordoire and not go wandering off into another part of the kingdom again but gets shut down FAST by Sean and Marvin telling him on no uncertain terms that their friends are more important than any questy stuff. They book it over to Fionport, Fellowship of the ring gotta get to rivendell with the nearly dead frodo sort of montage. Henrik Recruited March 1567-April 1567: Get to Fionport. Meet Henrik. Henrik fixes up Jackie muttering about how it’s really simple blah blah blah. Meet Bridget. Meet Richard. Anti takes notes on both of them secretly. Later they have a talk about how Henrik should join the quest. Henrik is conflicted. Richard actually encourages him to take the opportunity in a seemingly uncharacteristic moment of ‘looking out for you buddy’ advice. Bridget thinks the idea is incredibly heroic and all that. Henrik says yes. Marvin is vaguely irritated the whole time because he’s going a bit stir crazy just sitting in the outskirts of this fancy city full of rich people and wants to pull out the classic tumblr guillotines or something and Sean and Anti keep having to tell him NO because these ppl are needed to be on their side later so Marvin just has to sit around looking grumpy while Jackie heals, Sean talks to Henrik, and Anti collects his evil manipulation plotting info. Recruiting the Guard Coalition May 1567-July 1567: After the fight in Cordoire and subsequent weeks healing up and all that, the group comes to the conclusion that they’re gonna need some military assets to actually get this done. Aka they need to get the Guard Coalition on their side. Jackie is their best contact for that. Only problem is that Jackie didn’t exactly leave the Coalition in the best way. Still he ends up going and being humble and saying “look, i should have been a big boy and left maturely instead of running off to be a vigilante, can we be cool so i can introduce you to my friends so you can help us save the kingdom from all this chaos.” and the Guard Coalition in general is very big about being organized and not having chaos so they end up saying yes on the condition that Jackie becomes a proper knight in the normal sense with training and all that. Cue montage of Jackie showing that he still remembers the training that they gave him for seven years of his childhood. Cue montage of Jackie learning the things he missed when he left early. Cue montage of Jackie showing off some things he learned while doing his own thing. Finally, they say he’s actually ready to be a legit knight and that he’s proven himself and his fellows worthy of their allegiance. As a sign of this allegiance, the Guard Coalition leaders allow Sean to be the one to knight Jackie, indicating their respect towards him as potentially their future leader. This is the first time Sean knights someone and it’s a big deal all around. Two of the knights there for certification training at the same time as this knighting happen to be Jackie’s old friends Robert and Steven. WOOO. FRIEND MAKEUP TIME CATCH UP BE BUDS YAY. They end up asking permission (PROPERLY) to spend their knightly time following Sean and being the official coordinaty people between the Guard Coalition and the questers. The Monaidh Plains August 1567-December 1568: With the Guard Coalition on their side, getting the Monaidh Plains into a reasonable semblance of order takes under a one year. The Coalition is the most organized group in the area at the time and so they’ve got a good sense of the existing structures of government and local politics and culture that really comes in handy; heck, they are basically the ruling government of the Monaidh Plains already. Within that year, every major political group or cultural group in the area is very, very loyal to Sean and his buds, or at least loyal to whoever the Coalition is loyal to. (psstttt this is another reason why the Coalition is so trusted and the go-to guard outfit in Duilintinn and kinda the king’s unofficial army). Warring parties in Cordoire are still too wrapped up in their own mess to really care, especially since the Guard Coalition has been around forever and never stepped on their toes in the past. A few of these dudes, however, take note and either try to squish Sean (and get squished back) or join Sean. The Eastern Coast January 1569-March 1572: Next stop, getting the merchants on their side. Rich people here we come. Sorry Marvin, hold your tongue pls. PLEASE. MARVIN WHAT DID WE JUST SAY?! Anyway so they head back to Fionport, prompting a cute reunion between Henrik and Bridget as they weather out the winter storms in the city and start planning how they’re gonna get these ppls on their side. This is a LOT harder than the Monaidh Plains because there is no big pseudo gov that they have connections to to get this done for them. The city has an actual government based on commerce and merchants and being rich and making money and sometimes exploiting people, but the benefit is that all the disposable income allows things like science and literacy and all that cool stuff to be funded. This government has an annoying habit of siding with whichever warring party in Cordoire that seems most likely to win at the time and betrays people a lot. It’s irritating. Somehow they manage to get them on their side, idk how, haven’t really thought that thru yet. Probably by proving that they will win via something idk. But now they’ve got money on their side yayyyyyyyyyy. And since these ppl have a lot of connections and influence and power/exploitation over the farmland to the north, the group kinda assumes that the northern areas of future House Brody are also on their side by default. This was a bit of a goof on their end but they don’t learn that until later. Turns out, while this influence does make word of their rise reach the northern regions, not everyone is cool with it. A lot of people in the area are like “this guy sounds a bit ridiculous” and go on about how stability is more important than change… though it does inspire a couple of young boys to be heroes themselves... Oh also Henrik gets married in June 1596, and has his first kid (Edmon) in January 1571, prompting his wife to remain with her family to care for the kid during the rest of the quest. March 1572: Chase and Chad set out on their adventure June 1572: Chad dies November 1572: Chase starts tagging along behind the group of adventurers December 1572: Jackie starts bringing Chase into the fold after he realizes Chase is freezing to death out there Success at Cordoire April 1572- November 1572: At this point, the warring parties in Cordoire have ALL taken notice of Sean and his gang. When the rich government that keeps siding with the party that is winning changes sides, it’s always a big deal in their little conflict. Them suddenly siding with a group of upstarts??? OH BOY. The group of adventurers go back to the Whetstone and prepare for being attacked with the Guard Coalition. They are surprised to find that a Mercenary Syndicate had formed in Mulladún of the mercs who didn’t want to be wrapped up in the Coalition’s rules and stuff but still wanted to rise above the chaos and banditry that plagued the land. At first the Coalition thought that this was gonna be a rival group but when the Syndicate’s leaders approached Sean upon his return they wanted to have an alliance to get rid of the greedy jerk ppl who just wanted power in Cordoire. Sean realizes that this doesn’t mean preparing for being attacked, but being the attackers. He’s torn; he was always more inclined to make allies rather than depose enemies in this fight. However, the others convince him to go for it, especially when a few more of these groups end up joining Sean’s side. They do the thing and win and it’s epic yay! Except then Steven dies. Boooooo. That’s why Fort Stiofán, so close to where he fell at Cordoire, is named after him and the song “All the Way” references him. Oh also Chase shows up at this point; they have the nice cute “okay i guess you’re here for good now huh?” moment right before the big major battle and everyone is like “OH SHIT” because there’s a bean here and we need to be doing a battle and i thought you left the bean somewhere safe Jackie and Marvin??? And Jackie and Marvin are like WE DID HE FOLLOWED US BACK.” Anyway, the leaders who allied themselves with Sean swore allegiance to him and began laying the foundation of an actual government in Cordoire, one that wasn’t full of chaos and fighting and instead was focused outward to help the people. With that set up, Sean and the questers are now headed towards the Southern Mountains to get the rural folks on their side, because even tho they’ve always been sorta out of the way and “unimportant” depending on who you talk to, Sean wants to make sure he isn’t a hypocrite and reaches out to every part of the land. And also the fact that Noefrach can completely screw them over if it messes with the Guardian River. Southern Mountains December 1572- August 1573: Go south to the Southern Mountains. Turns out there’s a group of bandit ppl who are used to the mountains and are kinda scary and possibly use stone walkers? And no one knew about them because of how isolated the mountains are from everyone else and Noefrach is too proud to really ask for help. They get attacked and that’s when “Fire and Dark” happens in May because Chase did a goof during the fight that got Sean a big bonk on the head by a rock boi. They go to Noefrach and Noefrach is like “okay so we heard about you and we dooooooo technically want to be with you guys but also we don’t want to seem overeager and begging and also we want to make sure that we are actually WITH you guys and not just some extra land you ignore forever, so to prove that you actually give a crap, can you please get rid of that bandit group that’s messing with us please and then we’ll side with you. Like the Monaidh Plains, Noefrach has the sorta kinda gov of the eastern half of the mountains and there really just isn’t any gov in the western half (just a bunch of isolated towns) so they were the key to getting the area really fast. So they go fight the bandits. The leader of the bandits runs the operation from the guardian spire. So that’s cool. They win. Noefrach is like “yeah okay y’all are cool.” Recruiting Jameson and Antonius Powers September 1573- June 1574: The group continues west into the western part of the Southern Mountains, near the forest. This is just a sort of “well we’re heading to the Draoidh Valley and we kinda want to just get a sense of who these ppl that everyone said didn’t have any sort of government are anyways” and do some general mini questing and all that jazz. End up picking up Jameson in October (someone GET THIS BOY SOME SHOES). End up making themselves well known enough in the region to be considered Pretty Cool Dudes by the local population. Then end up veering kinda into the Western Forest because oooooooohhhhh interesting magic forest of potential temptation or fascination here and then they have lots of cool adventures in there and Anti finds the spook powers which is very concerning and finally they leave because the fog is coming and being in the forest during the fog is bad. And then Anti does the septiceye incident. And Marvin is like “well crap let’s go to my grandma’s house she can fix this probably it’s just over the lake” only they end up fording the Gáire River instead and cutting thru the forest and THEN having to ford the Rúnach River and ALL THIS IN THE FOG AGAIN and finally making it to Monacoil and grandma fixes them all up nice and good. Draoidh Valley July 1574- March 1575: Grandma now has a lot of influence because she’s made a Mages' Guild. Mages are now seen with less suspicion as the isolated swamp villages of the Draoidh Valley realize that the one mage in their town is not actually a fluke of nature but a thing that is normal. Some people want to emulate magic without actually doing it for whatever reason and begin doing inventing instead. This is a massive cultural revolution that grandma has pulled off in the past decade. Plus she’d been keeping up with things somehow (i’m not saying psychic/scrying grandma but that’s exactly what i’m saying) and was ready and waiting for them to show up and get started helping them get the place on their side. It takes less than a year. It’s great. They are on a roll. It’s really coming together now. Oh and also suddenly Sam is really really pissed off at Anti for some reason and the only reason he doesn’t kill on sight is that he’s Sean’s friend………….. The Final Stretch April 1575-March 1576: There's a period here where the entire quest sorta pauses, partially just in shock that they've gotten everyone on their side, and they aren't sure what the next step is. Turns out, the next step is planning HOW the kingdom is going to function once it's founded, and making sure that everyone is actually going to live up to their word. During this time, they take Jameson and Chase everywhere to see all the various places and get their input on the parts of the future kingdom they haven't seen yet, since the group has grown to respect their unique perspectives. April 1576- June 1576: '''After spending a significant amount of time in Fort Conchúr to coordinate with their various new allies in the western part of Duilintinn and monitor the situation to make sure that everything was ready and set up for kingdom-ing, the group passes back thru the Southern Mountains to head to Cordoire, mostly just to check on Noefrach and see if they were still cool with them and loyal and all that. Turns out, they are! So then they go north and hit Roskeagh on the way to Cordoire where Chase meet Stacy, Jameson is jealous, some party members are concerned about the potential of this relationship. Then they keep going to Cordoire and Stacy comes with. '''July 1576-April 1577: They are now in Cordoire. Things are looking absolutely fantastic. Now all they need to do is get everything all finalized and make the government a thing and all that great stuff. BUT PROBLEM. Turns out the northern farmland bits aren’t as cool with being a part of the kingdom as they thought they would be. These ppl were very stable and routine based because farms are built upon routine and they didn’t want to have a new kingdom. They liked being left alone, selling their stuff to the rich people in the southeast and being protected by the fighty people in the southwest. They didn’t want to be aligned with a bigger power that would actually have authority over them and all that. And the rich money ppl weren’t gonna side with them if they couldn’t still have access to their farm ppl and it’s like OH GOSH CRAP. So they have to scramble a bit and promise to shape the economy of the new kingdom around this system that’s already in place. The farm people make their own thing and are provided with the other stuff they need by other parts of the kingdom. Only instead of selling stuff to and having that stuff being solely distributed by the rich trade people, it would be distributed by the central government (and the rich trade ppl would get jobs in the central government oooohh) to all different parts of the kingdom. Essentially, it’s taking what these two parties already had going for them and applying it to every other part of the kingdom. And instead of exclusively profiting from these goods, they’d first be sent out to other parts of the kingdom and sold there. The rich trading people who were still in Fionport and not given government jobs were irritated, until they realized that being a part of this kingdom that also had jurisdiction over the mage and inventors to the west meant that they could trade those items instead, and those were ACTUALLY a unique thing that only Duilintinn could make, so that trade would be just as profitable if not more so and also encourage more diverse imports coming back into the country, now that these rich trade ppl can focus exclusively on trade and not also managing the distribution/sale of stuff made in the farmland regions. Farmland regions are like “look as long as nothing changes we don’t really care who is in charge” so that saves the day. This is also what keeps king Sean from giving them a lord later on because they were so insistent on not changing at first (until the enemy started attacking and then they changed their minds right quick). This economic setup meant a lot of coordination between the five major regions of Duilintinn; aka the plains, valley, southern mountains, coast, and farmland. This meant that at the same time that they were setting this up, they had to establish local government centers to coordinate all of this trade back and forth between these regions. One was in Monacoil, one in Mulladún, one in Aghaboy, one in Noefrach, and one in Fionport. These would eventually be the places where noble houses would be founded (see the houses really are just figureheads, the entire system was set up before the lords were there and then continued working once they vanished). There were a few small snags in the establishment of the government in each of these cities. We already talked about Fionport and Aghaboy and their whole deal, but what about Mulladún, Monacoil, and Noefrach? The first was Mulladún. The Mercenary Syndicate had been largely responsible for cleaning the place up, but the Guard Coalition was much more influential in the overall quest. Since the major government hub of the area would be in Mulladún, both groups wanted to stake their claim over the city and the influence they’d have there. The mercenary Syndicate actually threatened to attack anyone from the Coalition who stepped into the city. However, the king had to say that the Coalition was allied with the government and king, and if the Syndicate wanted royal support, they needed to accommodate the Coalition. The Syndicate knew that fighting the king would be big stupid, especially since they were a relatively new group that still didn’t have a lot of credibility. Most people still thought the Syndicate were just a bunch of untrustworthy mercs compared to the Coalition, and turning against the king would cement that. In addition, sharing a city with the Coalition would actually lend credibility to the Syndicate’s operations… so they cooperated. Problem solved. Noefrach was the next issue. It wasn’t a huge deal; just more of the same stuff they had to deal with during the quest. Noefrach was essentially an independent city-state until now, and turns out, not everyone was cool with the deal that the city leaders made with Sean and his buds. Noefrach had been the site of many leadership turnovers and tribal takeovers since the interim years began, with various groups taking over the city for the advantageous river spot and then getting taken over by someone else who wanted the same river spot. These were rural country-ish people and they didn’t trust the people from the north (especially Fionport) who were “civilized” which to them meant untrustworthy and moneygrabby and sneaky. They thought that, instead of fighting for the city, they were trying to take it stealthily via politics. Sean had to guarantee their independence and protection from enemies who would take over the city otherwise and made it very clear that he would not stand for the same cycle of coups that had been happening previously. Much like Aghaboy, this is why this area didn’t get a lord for some time, until well after the enemy had attacked. Even then, however, there’s a reason that rumors of Jameson’s titling caused such a stir and controversy. For now, however, while many leaders of Noefrach were still suspicious, they did understand and respect the politics of allies in war and defense. If they were attacked and Sean didn’t come to their aid, they would have every right to pull away from the young kingdom and reject the king, according to their cultural laws. With this back door in mind, they accepted the young king’s pledge of defense, as well as resources and all the other fun stuff that the kingdom would provide. Monacoil was the easiest by far. Marv’s grandma knew full well that the king was destined for greatness, everyone in the city trusted her judgment, the mages were all for Sean, the inventors were all for Sean, it was great. The only problem was the deal with the rich trader dudes of Fionport that said they could export magical goods and services to the rest of the world, which btw was a badly needed service in some areas. Monacoil was at first apprehensive about this, since the magic was an intrinsic part of Duilintinn and that didn’t feel right to them. Thankfully, new understandings of how magic and souls worked came out around this point. The knowledge that magic and souls were the same thing, just in different forms, and that everyone had magic inside of them, even if they didn’t understand it or if it wasn’t an intrinsic part of the ecosystem like in Duilintinn, really changed how Monacoil viewed Duilintinn’s major export being magical goods and services. Magic didn’t belong to them, it belonged to everyone, and it was their duty to share it with the rest of the world, since the rest of the world didn’t understand the nature of themselves or the magic and potential within them. That resolved that real quick. So yeah, that's a solid near year of political nonsense. Basically at this point, the kingdom is founded, but no one is willing to sign any papers and stuff to say that it is until everyone has what they want. :P April 1577: Sean is made king and Duilintinn is officially founded Category:Messy Page